Dec. 9, 2016
11:30 pm
Beijing, China
First of all…
Happy birthday, Meghan! I hope you have an amazing day and a great lunch with Mom. I’m p–ying that Abba blesses you beyond belief this coming year! Love you so much and miss you lots!
Also, happy birthday to Aaron McClay. Sorry, you don’t get large pink letters, Aaron. You’re not cool enough 😛 But I also p–y that you have a great year ahead. Enjoy time with the new puppy.
Now a quick post because I still have some work to do tonight. Today was a suuuuper long day. For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, you may have seen the selfie I posted today. If you did, you saw in the caption that I went on a field trip today. Let me rephrase that, I led a field trip today. EF had a group of 8 teachers take a huge group of 3rd graders to the Beijing Auto Museum. Once there, we split into 6 different groups of about 25 kids each. Laranda and I were paired to lead a group together. We taught a 30 minute class on the vocabulary we would be using (car, truck, van, wheel, etc.) and then led the kids around the museum for an hour. It was actually a lot of fun. We got to hang out with the kids and walk through the exhibits. We had a little booklet for them to fill out, but since I didn’t know where the answers were and they weren’t obvious, we didn’t get most of the answers. They told us that it wasn’t a big deal, which I’m very grateful for. The kids were pretty well behaved and were much better at English than I had been led to believe. I had a great time talking to them and getting to know them.
While the museum was fun, volunteering for this ended up being a lot more than I realized. We had to meet the group at the museum, which was supposed to be a little over an hour away by train. Unfortunately, we had to leave at rush hour. As a result, it took about an hour and a half to arrive at the museum stop. Luckily, Brian and I (yes, another thing we did together) had anticipated this and left 2 hours early. Of course, that meant we had to leave at 7am this morning. As a result of the early morning, Brian and I have both had a tough day today. I was restless and didn’t sleep well last night. Evidently, Brian didn’t get much sleep either since he had slept in too long on his day off and then stayed up too late. Consequently, we were both exhausted. It wasn’t super bad at the museum because we’d had enough time to grab a coffee. Once we got back to the office, however, it was a killer. The entire day was spent pumping ourselves full of caffeine and trying not to fall asleep at our desks. It didn’t help that today was just a paperwork day, so we sat in our seats all day. I was so exhausted by the time I left for home that I actually fell on the steps of the bus. It wasn’t all my fault. The driver did slam on the brakes a little, but I fell because my reflexes just weren’t fast enough. The security lady on the bus was super nice. She came up to check on me and laughed with us about it. I was super embarrassed.
All I really want to do right now is go to bed. Unfortunately, I still have work to do. My appraisal meeting is tomorrow. This is the meeting that determines if I’ve passed my probation period and am allowed to stay at EF. I have a few more things I need to do to prepare. Hopefully, I’ll make it through just fine. All the feedback I’ve received so far seems pretty positive. I just hope it’s all true.
Good night!
Kristen
Quick note:
My dad mentioned that some people showed interest in sending me Christmas letters. Unfortunately, letters are a little tricky here. They don’t always get delivered correctly. As a result, my parents are collecting letters for me at their house and then sending them over in a package all at once. The package is going out on the 15th, so have your letters delivered by 12/14/16. The address is:
Kristen McKell
PO Box 1869,
Chillicothe, OH 45601
You can also scan your letters and send them to me via email at kristen@mckell.com. Finally, you can send your letter to me personally if you have it delivered in a UPS-type envelope. My center is the best place to have stuff shipped to since everything in China has to be signed for, but they don’t accept letters. A UPS-type envelope or a physical package is okay, though. The address is a bit tricky. For all US forms, use this address:
Kristen McKell
EF Kids and Teens Yizhuang Center
3rd floor, West Zone, Hualian Shopping Center,
No.8 Ronghuazhonglu, Yizhuang,
Daxing District, Beijing 102600
China
That address will only get the package out of the US, so you also need to have the Chinese address written in characters. Copy and paste the following address and phone number onto a word document and make the font fairly large. Print it out and put it on the package where it will definitely be seen. If the Chinese postal service does not see this address, they will simply throw the package away. Also, if you fill out customs forms, make sure to put that the package is worth somewhere under $100, otherwise I have to go pick it up at the airport. As you can see, it’s a lot of work to mail me a package. So, if you have a Christmas card for me, just send it to my parents and let them do it all at once.
Kristen McKell
英孚少儿英语
华联力宝购物中心3层西侧
荣华中路8号
亦庄经济开发区
大兴区
北京市电话18310226231
